An easy answer is that the music that they covered...was not as readily available in the UK...Blues, for example...plus it was very common
for MANY artist then to re-do songs that were just a few years old.

Not really much different today...how many songs are "re-mixed"...sampled...covered...and mashed up these days?

StonesFan1990 wrote on May 31^st, 2012 at 6:45pm:


because they weren't a pop band and the notion of 19 year old English kids writing blues songs was preposterous. Which when you think about it, is a pretty reasonable perspective.

There wasnt so much of a link between being a songwriter and being a recording artist back then. The 'Tin Pan Alley'/ 'Brill Building' method of 'house' songwriters was still very common. The singer-songwriter trend became more the norm as the decade progressed.

Its a thing that a lot of people who dismiss the likes of Sinatra, Elvis etc lightly because they werent writers tend to forget. It just wasn't that common back then for commercially popular artists to also write their own material.

The fact that it became de rigeur for rock/pop acts to write their own material after that is probably part of the reason why the latter day trend of boybands doing soulless and lifeless covers of old songs is seen as a trend that is regressive.

Keith is on record as saying that when he started out in the Stones, the notion of being a songwriter was about as relevant to him as being a blacksmith.  It was seen as (for the most part) an entirely different discipline.

Keith always says there is only one song...just different versions....

Their one and only mission when they began was to "turn people on to Muddy Waters" and the other American blues artists they loved. This music was the "alternative" music of the day - rare, outside, forbidden, hard to get your hands on. When Mick and Keith met on the train that fateful day, it was Mick's armload of imported blues records that made Keith strike up a conversation.

And Gazza is exactly right - artists writing their own songs wasn't common back then. The Beatles admired Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry for doing just that, and set out from the beginning to write their own songs. Their success changed the playing field in many ways, but that was the big one. Even though the Stones loved Chuck Berry, they initially had no real desire to become songwriters.  They were just afraid that they would eventually run out of cool obscure blues songs to cover.

Gazza wrote on May 31^st, 2012 at 7:46pm:



Or any other job, for that matter.  

StonesFan1990 wrote on May 31^st, 2012 at 6:45pm:



Just to clarify this.

The first two Stones UK albums (and their US debut) both had 9 covers out of 12.

The second US album, 12 x 5 (released october 1964) had five original compositions out of 12, credited either as Jagger-Richard or Nanker Phelge. 'The Rolling Stones, Now' released in the US in February 1965 had four original songs out of 12.

If you look at the breakdown of songs released by the band in the first few years of their history, you can see the progression :

1963 - 1 out of 4 songs is an original
1964 -  12  out of 35
1965 -  13 out of 29
1966 -  21 out of 22 (the exception being a studio version of 'I've Been Loving You Too Long' recorded mid 1965 for 'Out of Our Heads' overdubbed with audience screams in October 1966 and released as a 'faux live' performance on 'Got Live If you Want It!' in the US)
1967 -  28 out of 29 (the exception being 'My Girl', a May 1965 outtake recorded for 'Out of Our Heads', released in the US on 'Flowers')

So, basically the Stones stopped recording covers for their own use in mid 1965. They wouldnt record and release another one for three years until they recorded 'Prodigal Son' for use on 'Beggars Banquet' in May 1968. The first of the celebrated 'Big Four' albums, all of which included a blues cover (in the case of 'Exile' they included two of them).